Considerations

Always updating ! ! !

Design should be: accessible, functional, thoughtful, sustainable.

Design should not be: mutually exclusive to comfort, ageist, sexist, or discriminatory of size.

Accessibility should consider: age, size, socioeconomic status, ability, and spectrums of presentation.

Sustainability is: materials, their use, their lifecycle, labor, marketing, markups, and the normalization of these even in the company of design.

Individuality involves the consideration of a wearer's specific experience. Grading sizes makes for diluted design.

My artistic design takes after Lygia Clark's consideration of the senses, Helio Oiticica's environment for the body, and often makes the garment a calculated restriction that encourages the consciousness of one's body as a personal experience. For fashion pieces, movement is examined from the body outwards, making garments extensions or embellishments of the wearer's movements. Lines, engineering, and the "sculpture" of a garment upon the body is paramount, often abandoning color and texture to avoid dependence. Layers can introduce the sensations of weight and contrast, interest stemming from the accumulation, composition, and interaction of lines and form.

Folks:

Rebecca Horne - restriction and extension

Yvonne Rainer - open ended and intuitive

Louise Bourgeois - grotesque and bodily

Lygia Clark - sensual and experiential

Helio Oiticica - environmental and performative

Boris Bidjan Saberi - architecture and language

Aitor Throup - narrative through accessories

Ann Demeulemeester - layers and mood

Damir Doma - texture and composition

DELPOZO - engineering clean shape and line

Statement

Teetering between the realm of fine art and functional fashion, my work constantly considers the body and its movement. Garment work demands an acknowledgement of the body - restrictions should be measured and intentional. My history of dance encourages a translation of garment into environment, relevant to both the wearer and the viewer. This environment can emphasize senses or movements to restrict or encourage the wearer. Garments are not only visual forms but experiences, just as a dancer’s performance simultaneously affects the audience and themselves. This multifaceted reality renders the body the ultimate default canvas, as every person with every ability has a relationship with their being.

Functional designs involve layers to build harmonious compositions, illustrative of a world that pushes functionalities out of the common realm. Collections of garments acknowledge each other to create polished shapes whose variety stems from line and texture. The combination of interest and innovation produces garments both austere and unusual.

Performative garments often manifest as masks hiding the identity of the wearer. This removes the anxiety of identity, encouraging both intimate experiences with the senses, and performance through the mask. Furthermore, my performative garments seem to stem from the goal of denying the constant exploitation of women’s bodies as entertainment, no matter their action - giving women an environment to act outside of their forced bodily identity.

Manipulations are intended to investigate fabrics as they are - mechanisms aren’t denying a fabric its essence, but finding the edges and corners of it. The goal is to expand upon a fabric’s abilities to then build garments that are innovative in all levels of their construction. Expanding these abilities allows for garments that parallel their illustrations, sparing no volume or severity of line.

Construction has the most interest to me when innovation is involved. A clever garment has fabric and design in communication towards functionality and durability. A clever garment is exciting to investigate as wearer or viewer, even if it is built in less time or tedium than the runway gowns of high fashion we think of. I hope to maintain a priority of design in engineering, instead of depending solely on the interests of color, texture, or other embellishments on simple garments.

Finally, I hope to build garments for all - fashion seems to design solely for a certain person, leaving those with certain necessities or priorities with few options to consider. It seems that design is cancelled out by the addition of comfort, or the grading of size, or even the consideration of materials and sustainability. By making sustainable design accessible to all with individuals specifically in mind, the illusions and exploitations maintained by the fashion industry will be broken down as a win for both efforts against climate change and human rights.